Outcome = IndiaSocial CaseBook 1 is in your hands

Download a copy and also win an HP Mini 110.

Here are 5 reasons why the IndiaSocial Casebook is a great resource for marketers and all those seeking to understand social media usage and impact in India:

• One stop shop for case studies, best practices around social media across verticals ranging from not-for-profit, B2B, lifestyle, telecom, travel, and more.
• Straight from the horse’s mouth- These case studies are in the voice of people behind these campaigns – they have been authored by brands, organisations and their partners themselves.
• Right questions to get the right answers – we didn’t make it any easy for the brands and organisations to be featured as a case study. An exhaustive set of questions on the objectives, reasoning, approach, impact and measures of success were built-in to ensure that the outcome was of very high quality. Many wrote to us how the form compelled them to ‘think through’ their own initiatives and understand the gaps.
• Experts Speak – we have tried to amalgamate diverse views from stakeholders across the spectrum of marketing communication in India.

Prema Sagar, Principal & Founder of Genesis Burson Marsteller speaks about how social media’s reach and speed of delivery impacts corporate social responsibility (CSR) and on the other end, leading branding consultant and Founder Brand-Comm, Ramanujam Sridhar talks about the challenges around clients experimenting with social media much like the radio in nineties without going the whole hog. Hari V Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India speaks about how companies are using social networks effectively to find and acquire new customers and Karthik Nagarajan, Head of Nielsen Online, India shares how discussion forums, message boards and review sites are the most underrated social segment.

There are many more interesting insights and perspectives by Anurag Batra, CEO, Exchange4Media (‘Why Social Media can be so unsocial’), Jessie Paul, CEO, Paul Writer (‘Communities Next Big Thing’), Toby Bloomberg (‘Social Media Strategy – 10 steps to create raving fans” and Faisal I. Farooqui, Founder & CEO, Mouthshut.com (‘Dear Brands, Let’s Get Social’).

• Know where you are – this resource will hopefully set you on your path of social media discovery; if you are already on one – it will enable you to benchmark your initiatives and if you are already a pioneer – it will hopefully inspire you to set higher targets.

We would like to thank all the brands and organisations who have shared their insights and learnings through their case studies and helped us create this wonderful resource.

We would like to thank our lead sponsor HP and associate sponsor NM Incite (a Nielsen/ McKinsey Company) for their support and encouragement.

We are grateful to George Skaria, Founder, ThoughtSpring and Former Editor, Indian Management for all his guidance and inputs on the Casebook.
We would love to hear your feedback on this edition of the CaseBook and suggestions on how we can produce an even better one next time.

Also, we would be soon announcing the IndiaSocial Case Challenge 2. Stay tuned!

Download a copy and also win an HP Mini 110.

Category – Long term initiative

Title-Peace Portal Network

Share a little about your organisation

Peace Portal is a not-for-profit private association (non-governmental) dedicated to project networking of sustainable solutions by bringing together faith groups, non-profits, and for-profits with solutions for achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. We produce the annual UN Day of Peace 24 hour global broadcast in coordination with Pathways To Peace & Unity foundation, and host the Local Currency Council conferences.

Executive Summary

We develop sustainable solutions to today’s economic and ecological challenges. We provide our Members, Strategic Alliance Partners, and business relations with tools, training, and relationships to successfully meet their goals.

Our purpose is to ease the global transition from the declining Industrial Age socio-economic model based on competitive commerce and use of natural resources, to a new Information Age model based on knowledge and collaboration.

Background

In the beginning, Ministers of of an Inter-Faith Fellowship were discussing the effects of the Information Age on the youth of today, especially the negative effects that violent battle based Virtual Worlds was having on their minds.

What could be done?

You can’t force the kids not to use the computer, they’ll need cyberspace tools and knowledge if they wish to succeed in the rapidly approaching Information Age knowledge market; they need to be comfortable with computers, not inundated and desensitized by them.

The best answer seemed to be to offer a non-violent alternative where the users (youth and adults alike) could be given a framework wherein they would be thinking and relating to each other as equal Digital Souls, in a fun co-creative Virtual platform. With partners we decided to create a Virtual Universe as a place where we could provide contexts for interacting, communicating, and educating. It is our intent to example universal principles of life without dis-agreeing with the names we give to these principles, who taught them, and/or other diversions from actually “embracing the principles” that lead to cooperative sustainable solutions.

Honesty, security, love, basic rights, and truth are universal principles of all religions and cultures; these principles provide a common thread to all of humanity, without prejudice to belief systems. Under the common banner of achieving the 8 Millennium Development Goals we have been building websites, online communities, and assisting in the development of information age commerce models which culminate in our yearly 25 hour UN Peace Day Global Broadcast Event.

Our portfolio of projects can be explored at www.freedigitalsystem.com, it includes our sites which include; www.peaceportal.mobi, www.peaceday.tv, www.localcurrencycouncil.org, www.foodfreedom.us, www.peacemusicproject.org, and others.

Approach/ Strategy

Our objectives are to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and more (things not included in the MDGs) through project networking of practical solutions to the challenges facing humanity.

Stakeholders

We engage all stakeholders, although our emphasis is on the development of emerging markets out of poverty through the leveraging of environmental and information technologies. Specific focus, although not exclusive, is on engaging sustainable information commerce models where value is based on human creativity and knowledge instead of use of natural resources; where someone can shoot a lion video instead of a lion for it’s skin and still provide for their family.

About the initiative

Our activities are educational and practical, we broadcast the 2st ever 24 hour UN Peace Day Internet event in 2009 and are following up this year with an even bigger event that has brought more partners together. We have also designed economic models adopted by for-profit companies that support our work. A portfolio of the educational and outreach sites we have created is located at www.freedigitalsystem.com ~ it provides links to multiple sites that address food, economics, human rights, and the wholistic range of inter-connected sectors required to create a better more just and sustainable world.

Impact – Outcome

We reached over 2 million people with our first Peace Day Broadcast, have reached countless others through our generally silent sponsorship of events, and allowed many people to find a new means of earning a living online (without using natural resources) as a result of our work with corporate entities such as www.getzooks.biz, www.epaycafe.com, and others.

Learnings

The greatest challenges are in getting organizations to work together without feeling threatened, to adopt the newly accepted model of “co-opetition”. We have learned, too trust the process, and keep being faithful to principles.

What Next

We will continue to provide educational outereach, on March 6th we are doing a global Community Currency Conference, on September 17-21st we will be broadcasting again the UN Day of Peace Event on our www.peaceday.tv channel, and we are hosting a unique unencumbered global currency system to shortly launch at www.epaycafe.com in association with our non-violent virtual worlds at www.projectrestoration.com and www.freedigitaluniverse.com. Collectively, all of these websites make-up a single holistic system called the GATE, Global Autonomous Transmitting Extranet, dedicated to the sovereignty (freedom) of all living beings on the planet.

Reasoning

Most peacebuilders and activist work in ways that decrease the effects of the problem, not the cause, which is the industrial age economic model based on competition. We work not as revolutionaries (we are not revolting), we work towards evolving to something better, a new age (the Information Age) by balancing and leveraging the new tools humanity now has at it’s disposal.

Credits Strategy

Kevin Kerber, Stephen Fantl, Pathways To Peace, Unity Foundation, World Community Service Center, Energy Village, Light of Life Society

Credits Execution

GetZooks, Unity Foundation, Kevin Kerber, Stephen Fantl, Valerie Gamache, Kyra Storojev, Susanna Meyer

Testimonials

You are ahead of your time, and just may save the world from it’s own ignorance. Jack Casarez

Thank you for your peace building efforts, it is much appreciated. Bill McCarthy, Director of Unity Foundation

Factsheet

Name of the Company:Peace Portal Mutual Benefit Association
Number of Employees:1-10
Category: Not-for-profit institution
Case submitted by: Stephen Fantl, Executive Director
Website: http://freedigitalsystem.com